The fuss over ball tampering
The modern game heavily favours batsmen, and the statistics prove it
Ashwin Achal
25-Feb-2013
The modern game heavily favours batsmen, and the statistics prove it. In this context, was Allan Donald right in asking for ball tampering to be legalised? Mike Atherton, who has had epic battles with the South African fast bowler, feels that Donald's opinion is worth discussion, but is not the right way to go. In the Times, Atherton, however, argues that while batsmen have become more aggressive of late, bowlers have gone into a defensive shell.
In the 1950s the average runs per wicket was 30.1 and 6.8 per cent of scores were more than 500. This stayed relatively constant until the turn of this century, which has seen a sharp spike to 34.1 and 8.7 respectively. Runs per hundred balls have never been higher than now.
Expectations of runscoring have soared. When Australia began the final day of the Lord's Test, already five wickets down and needing to score more runs in the last innings than any other team in first-class history, the bookmakers were willing to go only so far as 5-2 on an Australia victory.